Description
Book SynopsisThis volume considers women's roles in the conflicts and negotiations of the early modern world. Essays explore the ways that gender shapes women's agency in times of war, religious strife, and economic change. How were conflict and concord gendered in histories, literature, music, and political, legal, didactic, and religious treatises? Four interdisciplinary plenary topics ground this exploration: Negotiations, Economies, Faiths & Spiritualities, and Pedagogies. Scholars focus upon many regions of the early modern world--the Atlantic world, the Mediterranean world, Granada, Indonesia, the Low Countries, England, and Italy--inflected by such religions as Islam, Catholicism, and Reformed Protestantism, as they came into contact with indigenous spiritualities and with one another. Essays and workshop summaries analyze how gender and class are implicated in economic change and assess the ways gender and religion map onto voyages of trade, exploration, or imperialism. They investigate how women, as individuals and as members of political or family networks, were instrumental in transmitting, promoting, supporting, or thwarting different religions during times of religious crises. This volume also offers methods for teaching and researching these topics. It will be invaluable to scholars of medieval and early modern women's studies, especially those working in history, literature, languages, musicology, and religious studies.
Table of ContentsContents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Conflict, Concord: Attending to Early Modern Women. Amy M. Froide Part One: Negotiations Big Sister as Intermediary: How Maria Rolandus Tried to Win Back Her Wayward Brother. Craig Harline Getting Past No or Getting to Yes: Nuns, Divas, and Negotiation Tactics in Early Modern Italy Colleen Reardon Workshop Summaries 1-6 Part Two: Economies History’s “Silent Whispers”: Representing the Past Through Feeling and Form. Megan Matchinske Columbus’ Sister: Female Agency and Women’s Bodies in Early Modern Atlantic and Mediterranean Empires Holly Hurlburt The Female Body in Islamic Law and Medicine: Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Pediatrics Maya Shatzmiller Workshop Summaries 7-10 Part Three: Faiths and Spiritualities Spaces for Agency: The View from Early Modern Female Religious Communities Silvia Evangelisti Marian Devotion and Identity in Early Modern Indonesia: Mother Maria, Queen of Larantuka Barbara Watson Andaya Workshop Summaries 11-18 Part Four: Pedagogies Gender Differentials in Honors Programs and Colleges Susan E. Dinan Geoffrey Chaucer, The Wife of Bath (ca. 1395) and Christine de Pizan, from Letter of the God of Love (1399) to City of Ladies (1405): A New Kind of Encounter Between Male and Female Albert Rabil, Jr. Early Modern Amazons: Teaching Conflict in Representation Eleonora Stoppino Workshop Summaries 19-21 Index About the Contributors
